Immigrants detained by ICE. Photo: Mark Avery/Associated Press.
By Francisco Dominguez and Roger D. Harris – Apr 16, 2025
Trump’s demonization of migrants affords him a patina of populism by falsely posing as a supporter of US workers erroneously threatened by aliens.
Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign that targets Latino migrants – particularly Venezuelans – as scapegoats in a broader geopolitical agenda. Bolstered through a controversial alliance with the Salvadoran president, Trump has overseen mass deportations, detentions in Guantánamo Bay and El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, and invoked 18th-century war powers to justify these actions.
Trump’s brutal attacks on the working class have been supplemented by the systematic demonization of immigrants – many of whom are themselves working class. During his electoral campaign, Trump not only promised large-scale deportations but, pandering to a far-right base, vilified migrants to unprecedented degrees.
In his 2015 campaign, Trump vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And upon returning to the presidency in 2025, Trump again promised to round up millions in what he boasted would be the largest deportation operation in US history.
However, as the record shows, immigrant deportations are, unfortunately, a bipartisan project. Contrary to Trump’s grandiose rhetoric, once in office for his first term, he deported less than one million rather than the 11 million he claimed would be expelled. That was less than the 1.6 million evicted by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama in a his first 4 years in office. While Democrat Joe Biden still holds the record for the most deportations in a year, Trump is determined to beat it.
To this end, Trump and his ultra-conservative Project 2025 confederates would like to end birthright citizenship, which would disproportionately affect nearly 65 million Latinos in the US. Arbitrary arrests, deportations, and the revocation of documentation – even for legal residents – are escalating daily, with Latino immigrants being the primary target in operations rife with racial profiling.
Trump is also trying to terminate the Humanitarian Parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), although the revocation has been halted pending legal proceedings.​ Ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once a vocal advocate for Cuban immigrants, now spearheads policies stripping them of legal protection.
Trump’s demonization of migrants affords him a patina of populism by falsely posing as a supporter of US workers erroneously threatened by aliens. Of course, Elon Musk’s buddy is no friend of the working class.
There is another more deeply political underpinning to Trump’s campaign related to Venezuela. Trump has falsely accused some Venezuelan migrants of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang on the flimsiest of reasons such as a tattoo in support of a football club. Thus immigrants, especially from Venezuela, are conflated with criminality. In fact, studies show US immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than the native-born.
In a highly redacted document, the US designated the Tren de Aragua to be a “transnational criminal organization” (TCO) in December 2024. This came after the Venezuelan government largely dismantled the gang in September 2023 at Tocorón Penitentiary, demonstrating the government’s antagonistic relationship to the gang. But its existence was being politically weaponized by the US.
On his first day in office, Trump initiated the process of designating the gang as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), legally making it a crime to provide it material support. In so doing, a circle of conflation was being constructed from migrant, to criminal, to gang member, and then the big leap to terrorist.
US Intelligence Contradicts Trump’s Narrative About Venezuela Government & Tren de Aragua
Alien Enemies Act
Trump’s invocation of the Alien and Enemies Act serves dual purposes. It is a legal pretext to justify mass expulsions. At the same time, it is a salvo in Washington’s renewed “maximum pressure” regime-change campaign against Caracas.
The application of the Alien Enemies Act for deporting individuals based on alleged gang affiliations is unprecedented and has raised legal and ethical concerns. While being adjudicated in the courts, the archaic 1789 war-time legislation is being used to target Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, even though the US is not at war with these countries…at least not officially. Nevertheless, some have been sent to detention facilities like the notorious internment camp in Guantánamo Bay.
The administration’s lack of transparency regarding deportation criteria has been staggering, as has its blatant disregard for due process. Many deportees were detained without evidence, arrest warrants, or probable cause – let alone justification for imprisonment.
The degrading treatment of detainees in Guantánamo has drawn wide condemnation as has the administration’s obsessive drive to deport Latinos – whether undocumented, temporary, or permanent.
Trump is also shipping Venezuelan migrants and lesser numbers of Salvadorians to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, a so-called “Terrorism Confinement Centre,” where conditions are subhuman. No visitation, recreation, or education are allowed at the extremely overcrowded facility. Lack of medical care and abuse are rampart, with reports of over 300 deaths in custody, some showing clear signs of violence.
The Trump administration struck a deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, paying $6 million to detain 238 Venezuelans branded “foreign terrorists.”
Meanwhile, Bukele boasted about the financial benefits of the arrangement. His Ocio Cero (zero leisure) prison labour program will, he said, contribute to the economic self-sustainability of the prison system, which critics say is tantamount to human trafficking.
Trump and Bukele both falsely claim to have no power to bring back a mistakenly deported Salvadoran legal immigrant. Kilmar Armando Abrego GarcĂa is now held at CECOT, even though a US judge ordered his return and despite the US Supreme Court’s ruling to do so. Instead, Trump and Bukele declared their intention to expand the scheme. Trump floated deporting even US citizens to CECOT, with Bukele responding: “Yeah, we’ve got space.”
BPR (Bloque de Resistencia y RebeldĂa Popular), a Salvadoran human rights organization denounced the Trump-Bukele pact as “arbitrary and dehumanizing,” violating international law and making El Salvador complicit in Trump’s criminalizing immigration policies. They demanded the Supreme Court nullify the detentions, arguing they violate constitutional protections against foreign judicial overreach.
Venezuela’s government has also taken action. Attorney General Tarek Williams Saab petitioned El Salvador’s Supreme Court for habeas corpus relief for detained Venezuelans. President Maduro condemned the deportations as kidnappings and sought intervention from the U.N. by contacting Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
President Maduro has vowed to fight for the repatriation of every wrongfully detained Venezuelan. This struggle must be joined by the international solidarity movement, demanding the immediate release of all unjustly imprisoned migrants.
(LAP)
Francisco Dominguez
Francisco Dominguez, a former refugee from Chile in the UK, is Head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom.
Roger D. Harris
Roger D. Harris lives in California and is with the anti-imperialist human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, the Venezuela Solidarity Network, the US Peace Council, and the Marxist Forum. He writes regularly on Latin American and the Caribbean with a special emphasis on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
